GOP leaders insist no overhaul needed

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Republican Party honchos who huddled here for their first big gathering since the election devoted lots of time talking about the need to welcome Latinos and women, close the technology gap with Democrats and stop the self-destructive talk about rape.

But the party’s main problem, dozens of Republican National Committee members argued in interviews over three days this week, is who delivers its message and how, not the message itself. Overwhelmingly they insisted that substantive policy changes aren’t the answer to last year’s losses.

Text Size

“It’s not the platform of the party that’s the issue,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. “In many cases, it’s how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said.”

A slide presented during a closed-press strategy session said that Mitt Romney might be president if he had won fewer than 400,000 more votes in key swing states.

“We don’t need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes,” said West Virginia national committeewoman Melody Potter.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told a luncheon crowd that the GOP is at “a turning point” and needs “real change.”

Then he clarified: “It’s not about ideology…The people on the left are the people on the left, and they ask us to come to them – which is absurd…Obama’s a hard core left-winger. I want him to compromise with us on our terms.”

Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett said the key to a GOP turnaround is to catch up with Democrats technologically.

“Listen, we’re a conservative party. I’m proud of that,” he said. “They were on the ground for four years in Ohio. We didn’t pick up what they were doing in that four-year period, and they were pretty damn effective.”

A big focus of the four-day session, which wraps up Saturday, was adopting a more positive attitude – and smiling! – when interacting with voters and reporters. New Hampshire chairman Wayne MacDonald said party leadings need to work on “not being sour-pusses on television or the radio” – that there is a way to be firm and assertive without being mean-spirited.

“Nobody is saying the Republican Party has to change our beliefs in any of our platform planks,” he said. “This party wants to serve everybody that believes in our principles.”

Many of the 168 elected members of the committee brought up the comments about rape by GOP Senate candidates Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Each lost, even as Romney won both states handily.

“On some things, we have the right policy and do a terrible job conveying it. And the Democrats have a bad policy and do a great job,” said Mississippi Republican Chairman Joe Nosef.

“So conservatives feel like, whether this is right or wrong, that if we’re talking about the issues, that we have a really good chance at winning. The thing we can’t do is start talking about crazy stuff… We run people off… A collective number of these people are tired of doing that.”

“I feel like a pro-life position is a position that a lot of people have, but that doesn’t have anything to do with crazy talk about rape,” he added.

Without objection, the full RNC approved a resolution by voice vote Friday calling on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and redistribute the money intended for cancer screening and preventive services to organizations that do not perform abortions.